Nicole Cooke, who has announced her retirement, celebrates as she wins the world cycling championships in 2008. Photograph: Alessandro Trovati/AP

The former world and Olympic cycling champion Nicole Cooke has retired from the sport with a stinging broadside at Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton and other drug cheats who "robbed" her and other clean riders of victories and prize money during her 11-year professional career.

Cooke, who kickstarted Britain's golden run of success at the Beijing Olympics by winning the women's road race and also became world champion in the same year, also took aim at the sport's governing body for being more obsessed with protecting its own image than promoting women's cycling.

Confirming her decision to retire, Cooke said she was "very happy" with her career but lamented that it had coincided with an era tainted by doping scandals.

"I am so very fortunate to have been able to have won clean," said Cooke, for whom cycling had been her "life's work" since the age of 12. "I have been robbed by drug cheats, but I am fortunate, I am here before you with more in my basket than the 12-year-old dreamed of. But for many genuine people out there who do ride clean, people with morals, many of these people have had to leave the sport with nothing after a lifetime of hard work."

The 29-year-old took aim at Hamilton, a former team-mate of Armstrong's who failed tests but consistently denied doping before belatedly laying bare the extent of the conspiracy within their team in his book The Secret Race. "Tyler Hamilton will make more money from his book describing how he cheated than I will make in all my years of honest labour," said the Welsh rider.

Cooke, who blazed a trail for women's cycling in the UK and won the British road race championship 10 times, made her announcement in the same week as Armstrong will appear on Oprah Winfrey's show for the first time since he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life.

"When Lance cries on Oprah later this week and she passes him a tissue, spare a thought for all of those genuine people who walked away with no reward – just shattered dreams. Each one of them is worth a 1,000 Lances," said Cooke. "I do despair that the sport will ever clean itself up when rewards of stealing are greater than riding clean. If that remains the case, the temptation for those with no morals will always be too great."

She said the cycling's world governing body, the UCI, had failed to grow road cycling for women because it was engrossed in defending itself against accusations of complicity in Armstrong's doping.

"The UCI have been so engrossed trying to find receipts for the equipment they bought after Lance made donations to them, and suing Floyd Landis after he blew the whistle, and holding press conferences calling Landis a liar," she said. "Whilst they have been busy with all these priorities, the women's road sport, that looked so promising in 2002 when I turned professional, has crumbled."

Despite the perceived strength of cycling in the UK at present, there has been consistent criticism of the low financial rewards and lack of competitive opportunities for women in the sport.

"I hope I will look on in 10 years' time and see a vibrant and healthy women's road scene. The key to that will be that the female athletes are treated with respect," said Cooke.